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Young guy running a Golden Retiever many ,many , years ago , was working on his CD novice. He was taught to tell the dog stay with a open hand and walk away. This young guy was running a licensed Derby stake. To his amazement he made it to the last series with his 20 month old amateur trained Golden running his first licensed trial the place Madison !Wisconsin. The Golden pinned the water marks. The guy was so nervous his hands were shaking. As he walked off the line, one of the judges, long deceased, told the young guy he was sorry but they had to eliminate him. The young Man asked why, the judge replied you hit your dog on the nose with your hand when you told her to stay. We considered it touching your dog and intimidation . I walked off the line thinking what the heck is this silly game called field trials. The local pro won the Derby. True story. If you didn't catch the "I " it was me. Their would be many more over the years, but, there were a few gifts too.

My best moment was my first. My dogs are trained by me, a full time working person, I entered my first Derby and we finished. We only jammed, but that green ribbon was like a blue for me. Everyone got hugs and I drove those 3 hours home so high. It was great.

Open land blind run from the top of a hill,,in sage brush field. At a hundred yards a 4 ft. high X 8 ft depth X 10 yards across,wall of sage brush. I put the dog on line into the wall of sage with one whistle,,,as a stood there waiting for him to blow threw the other side,,,waiting ,,,,,,,,waiting,,,,,,,,waiting,,,,,,,waiting,,,,wh ich seem like forever he never appeared ,,May be a pop who knows,,I start scanning the field left right ,,,left right,,,nothing,,,this went on for an eternity As I throw my hands up I look at the ribbon where the blind was and here comes my dog with the bird.
The judges gave me the funniest look ,,,like as if to say... You stupid knucklehead why didn't you handle him.
Apparently every one else saw him ricochet of the woody sage brushes at a right angle and come out ,,,outside what should have been my visibility also,,,,, and haul arse in a different direction.

Need to get Mr. Bill Connor, Dr. Ed Aycock and some of the other "seasoned" FTers to toss a few bones on here... Change some names to protect the guilty if necessary...

The trouble with a lot of this stuff, unless you are directly involved leaves you open to liable. Only stuff i was directly involved in or as the biker's credo is " two can keep a secret if one of them is dead" will stay mum about!

Ok, the dog in my avatar, Cody who we loved to death was one of those Mach II with his hair on fire dogs and a notorious water cheat. Cheryl was running him in the amateur at Butte around 2001 or 2002.

Cody was super clean going into the water blind, which was on that fish pond-technical water, with dikes running at odd angles. The line was about 100 yards away from the water with some empty bird crates right on line side by side touching. Handler after handler had four or five whistles trying to get their dogs over those crates, most just skimmed the side and moved on from there. Cheryl points at the crates and lines Cody up, says "Back" and like a flash he is off on a perfect line, running full speed over the bird crates and toward the entry point, where without hesitation he veers right 70 degrees down the shore. Cheryl blows a hard sit whistle which he completely ignores, then she blows whistle after whistle, harder and harder. Cody never stops or even slows down as he runs to the end of the pond, makes a hard left on the first dike, still at full speed with Cheryl blowing her heart out, he goes left down the dike to the other end of the pond where he turns hard right, still at mach 2, then fifty yards to the bird. Then to add insult to injury he swims a perfect line all the way back. The gallery felt bad, but it was too funny not to laugh.

I know its not cool to put my wife up there with that story, but it's the funniest one I have.

bill,
as you know, you needed to get out of that organization. in my world, if you are at quota, all your customers are taken care of and i am your sales vp........i would fire you if you didn't go to a field trial!

i would probably reset your objectives next quarter though.

So...now that you have provided Bill with career advice...what is your best field trial moment?

Mine was this past spring...when we made it to the water blind in our first AA event. Got big plans in the fall in addition to some new young bullets.